


this is how stories end

by wave_of_sorrow



Category: A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wave_of_sorrow/pseuds/wave_of_sorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time four men were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit, and this is how their story ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is how stories end

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the April challenge at the lj kinkmeme. There's a bit of a play on the Robert Frost quote "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.", as well as a The Smiths lyrics from The Cemetery Gates.

_If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story._  
Orson Welles

Once upon a time four men were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. This isn’t the story of how they escaped. This isn’t the story of how they survived as soldiers of fortune. Mostly, this is the story of how it all ends.

\--

They get pardoned, eventually. It’s nothing short of surprising when they’re offered a deal that involves clearing their names and a generous sum of money for each of them in exchange for help, but they’re not stupid enough to pass it up. It’ll always be a bit of a joke between them; that maybe the authorities just got tired of chasing them. They never talk about how the four of them were getting tired of being chased, but that’s because they don’t need to.

By the time they reclaim their lives almost two decades have passed and they have to realize that the process involves a lot less reclaiming and a lot more starting over than they’d imagined. Still, that’s fine. They buy houses with their settlements, one for each of them. It’s strange to have a place all of your own if you’ve lived in each other’s pockets for so long; strange and wonderful and a little bit horrible. If Murdock spends the first few months sleeping in Face’s guestroom nobody mentions it.

BA gets a job as a social worker and spends most of his time with the kids in the neighbourhood he grew up in himself. He gives them something to do with their hands that doesn’t involve bashing each other’s heads in and makes them do their schoolwork. A few of them he even gets to pick up a book. When he talks about them you can tell how proud he is.

Face says he doesn’t plan on working, ever again. He wouldn’t have to, not with the money they’ve been given, but he makes a fortune investing his share anyway. He marries a pretty, young thing and their first anniversary hasn’t rolled around yet when they have a beautiful baby boy. Face says he’s never been happier, and you can see it in his smile.

Murdock rents a plane and spends most of his time in the air or inviting the others over for dinner, old habits dying hard and all that. He’s slightly dismayed to discover that most of his favourite TV shows have been cancelled by now, but a few special edition DVD box sets rectify that. He seems much calmer now, even if sanity is still a long way off.

Hannibal makes it his mission to buy every book he’s ever read and all the ones he meant to read but never had the time to. His house steadily fills with stories and he donates most of his money away. He says he doesn’t have any use for it beyond a few good cigars and a nice scotch. The mad edge of his smile is gone and you think he might have found his peace.

\--

This is where, if it was that kind of a story, you’d find out that they lived happily ever after to the end of their days. But it isn’t that kind of a story, and this is the truth about happily ever afters: they don’t exist outside of fairytales, and fairytales are everything but truth.

\--

A few years later and a lot has changed, except that nothing really has.

BA is still working with the kids, and by now he’s managed to get enough funding to set up a community centre for them. He tries to pretend it isn’t much, but you can tell he’s proud of what they’ve accomplished. He’s met a lovely woman and married her, and treats her son from a previous relationship like his own. They’re expecting their first child together in the spring.

Face now owns several large companies and seems to turn up in a new car every week. He’s still married, though to a different and younger woman, and he’s had two more children with her. He couldn’t hide how much he loves them if he tried, and you think you’ve never seen anyone more cut out to be a father. The façade of successful businessman is one nobody’s buying.

Murdock’s become a flight instructor, though how he managed to appear like the sane and safe choice for the job is anybody’s guess. Perhaps being out of the army is doing him a world of good, more than any doctor or medication ever could. Or perhaps he just spent enough time with Face to learn how to properly pull a con. Either way, you think he might never have been happier.

Hannibal’s house has morphed into something of a library, and everything smells of paper and printer ink and the dust of ancient history. He’s a grandfather to both Face’s and BA’s children the way he’s always been a father to them, and the stories he tells them are mad and impossible and nothing at all like what truly happened. The only time you’ve ever seen him more in his element was at war.

\--

This is a point in their lives when they’re all happy. They’ve become versions of themselves as they might have been outside of the army, as they could have been if they’d never been wrongly imprisoned. If it was that kind of a story, this is where it would say _the end._ But it isn’t just a story, and this is the truth about life: it goes on.

\--

A decade passes and nothing much changes, except that everything does.

BA is still happily married. They have two daughters, Grace and Joy, and he’s more of a father to his wife’s son than anyone’s ever been. He’s still working at the community centre, but there’s been a lot of violence and not much he could do about it, and you can tell how angry it makes him. Most of his time is spent fixing up the old van, though nothing at all of the original remains.

Face has been divorced and re-married twice by now, and he’s running out of meaningful names to give his children. He does an admirable job juggling ex-wives and kids and his current, sweet and stubborn wife, but it’s exhausting him, and you think he’s starting to fray around the edges. He spends most of his evenings seeking comfort from Hannibal, but all he ever seems to get are painful verbal jabs.

Murdock has had to give up being a flight instructor on account of a mental health exam he failed rather spectacularly. Face got him a dog, a real one, as consolation, and you think that the affectionate Golden Retriever is still called simply Dog should worry them. They take turns coming round to check on him every few days, but where there used to be deep comradeship there’s only civility left.

Hannibal is still much the same as he was ten years earlier, except for the hair that’s gone completely white and his recently acquired reading glasses. He says he’s old enough to appreciate a bit of peace and quiet when his boys reminisce about their glory days, and you know he’s lying through his teeth. He has his cigars and his scotch and his books and a big family, but he’s restless and tired and unhappy.

\--

This is where, if it was that kind of a story, the credits would start rolling so you’d know that endings aren’t always perfect. But it isn’t that kind of a story, and this is the truth about endings: they’re seldom happy, and when they are they’re mostly not where the story ends.

\--

A few years more and these four men are nothing like their former selves anymore, except that they never changed.

BA has admitted defeat in the losing battle for the community centre and left the kids to their own devices. His own children begrudge him his absences from their lives in favour of trying to fix things he knew he never could, and his wife wonders how long it’ll be until he gives up on them too. The van looks exactly as it always did, and he’s angrier than ever.

Face has just been divorced again and only his two youngest children actually see him anymore, and he’s sleeping with a married woman. He’s trying to reconcile with his oldest son, but when Face calls him _kid_ it sounds all wrong coming from his mouth. He sleeps too little and screws too much, and when he smiles it doesn’t reach his eyes, and he looks lost.

Murdock was relocated to a mental health institution a while ago, and he doesn’t seem unhappy. In fact, he doesn’t seem anything at all. He’s quiet and unresponsive, and when he speaks he babbles about flying. BA is the only one to visit him more than once, and Murdock tells him that getting pardoned was the worst thing that happened to them. Nobody visits him after that.

Hannibal has holed himself up in his house, with only books and cheap scotch for company; he’s had to give up the cigars a couple of years back. He rarely sees any of his boys anymore, and he wishes he had more photos to look at in their absence. His smiles, once reckless and mad and numerous, are hardly seen now, and he seems more unhinged than ever.

\--

This is where, if it was that kind of a story, there would be something to console you; a glimpse into the future perhaps, promising that the lives of these four men won’t forever be so bleak, or maybe a collage of happy memories long past. But it isn’t that kind of a story, and this is the truth about people: they’re born, and then they suffer.

\--

After that, there isn’t much more to tell.

Hannibal dies first, unsurprisingly, and his funeral is the last time all four of them come together. After that, they don’t meet again and pretend it’s because they’re busy with their own lives. Face clears out Hannibal’s house on his own, and to an old picture of their younger selves he says all the things he was too scared to admit when he still had the chance.

Murdock dies barely a year later, and there’s only Face to watch him be buried when instead his ashes should have been scattered to the winds. BA picks up what little there’s left of Murdock’s possessions from the hospital, and when people express their condolences he shrugs, and pretends that Murdock was just a crazy fool.

Face dies almost five years later, and BA hasn’t seen him since Hannibal passed away. His funeral is big and expensive, and there’s ex-wives crying and children mourning, and BA waits until they’ve all left to say his last goodbyes to the Faceman. Out of their little band of misfits he doesn’t think he’s the one who’s meant to be here, but that’s how it goes.

By the time BA dies he’s outlived his wife and both his daughters, lost to old age and accident, respectively. His funeral is small, only his wife’s son and a few friends and distant relatives in attendance as he’s buried alongside the mother who died while he was on the run. The money he’s left is used to continue the work he started in his old neighbourhood.

\--

Once upon a time four men were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. This wasn’t the story of how they escaped. This wasn’t the story of how they survived as soldiers of fortune. Mostly, this was the story of how it all ended.

There is a short version of this story, and it is the short version of every story: they were born, and then they lived, and then they died.

This is how this story ends, and this is how all stories end, and somewhere in a warehouse a black and red van is gathering dust.

_All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you._  
Ernest Hemingway


End file.
